


Potential For Dishonesty

by monocrow



Category: Kagerou Project
Genre: F/M, Hide and Seek, Pre-Relationship, time to force my completely improbable rarepair on you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-14
Updated: 2020-06-14
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:35:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,328
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24709963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monocrow/pseuds/monocrow
Summary: Maybe goading Kano –Master of Hide and Seek,a title he had granted himself, and one that was starting to seem more and more accurate as the minutes wore on – into a game with her was a poor idea.Even if he couldn't find her, he seemed like the kind of person to drop it halfway through without telling her, to let her sit in the cupboard for the rest of the evening. Or maybe to turn the dryer on while she was sat curled up in it.He didn't seem like the kind to play fair.
Relationships: Kano Shuuya & Kozakura Mary, Kano Shuuya/Kozakura Mary
Comments: 4
Kudos: 13





	Potential For Dishonesty

**Author's Note:**

> i can't believe there are only _three_ other kanomary fics... unacceptable

Mary delicately shuffles between her three remaining cards – they're made for Go Fish, with cute little cartoon sea creatures printed over them in bright colors. Her deck keeps dwindling while Kano's grows, along with all of the stacks of sets that he's claimed. It's frustrating, especially with the way that he looks so entirely  _ bored_ _,_ with an arm tossed over the back of the couch and glassy eyes, tears budding in the corners when he yawns.

"This is boooooring," he says, eventually, tossing what's left of his hand down; everything that she had the match for. He would have won, she realizes glumly.

"How are you so good at this?" She sighs more than asks, slinking down into her seat. She's past the point of self doubt in her Go Fish skills (nearly playing everyday with Seto and Momo had honed them well), and past when she still felt pinpricks of embarrassed tears in her eyes whenever someone crushed her at it. Now it's just childish upset and intrigue at the possibility of a new strategy; if one can consider there to be Go Fish strategies, that is.

Kano shrugs, easy in one fluid movement. He's got a self satisfied smirk on. It makes her want to catch his eyes so she can freeze him in place, but he's gotten disappointingly good at dodging her.

"He's not good," Kido says as she passes through the living room, a load of laundry over her hip, "he can see your reflection in the pitcher behind you." 

"Hey— Kido!" He cries.

Mary turns, and she can feel her hair puff up when she does. A metal pitcher is there – the one she had spent over an hour polishing until it shined after Seto found it and brought it home. She whips around to look him in the eye, but he's already looking away, a hand covering his snickers and his eyes up in the ceiling.

She just puffs her cheeks and sighs. "It's not nice to cheat."

"Hm," he says, uncovering his mouth and tapping his chin, like he just might be considering that for the first time. "Yeah, well," he shrugs, "it's fun."

Mary sighs again, and starts gathering her cards up, stacking them into a neat pile and tapping the edge when she's done.

"Eh? Hey, where are you going?"

"To read," she says, sticking up her chin and keeping her eyes on the coffee table. She burns her glare into a thick scar in the wood, instead of into Kano's head.

"No, don't  _ go_ _,"_ he whines, grabbing at some of the cards she's yet to pick up and pulling them into a messy pile. "It's so boring to play with Kido."

"You shouldn't say that. She'll get mad if she hears you."

"Who cares? It's true," he lets go of some of the cards, and she nabs them. He pouts.

She bites the inside of her cheek. Playing with Kano is  _ fun_ _,_ provided he's not teasing her or cheating, or making up new rules as they go along. 

"Lets play something else, then," she says after a moment.

"Like what?" He drops his arm to his lap and leans forward. Mary leans back, so their faces aren't quite so close.

"I don't know," she taps at the cards, "hide and seek?" 

Kano blinks at her, then laughs. She can feel herself reflectively puff up, and Kano quickly makes sure to look away from her eyes.

"I'd beat you in the first five minutes. I'm the master of hide and seek."

"I'm good at it too!" She says, putting down the cards and crossing her arms. He just looks more amused, with still shaky shoulders while he gets his giggling under control.

"Maybe, but no one is as good as me."

She huffs. "Then let's play it."

Kano blinks at her, then sighs. "Pass." He falls back against the couch so his head is laid against it's rest. "It's not fun if I already know I'm gonna win."

Mary doesn't think she's prone to poor decision making; she does, however, know that she's no where near being smartest of the Dan. So maybe she's just poking the (metaphorical) sleeping bear – or literal bear, if Kano decided to use his eye ability – by trying to goad him into a game he's sure he'll win, especially when it's out of some weird complex towards him that she seems to just now be developing.

"Well... if you don't play with me," she mutters, "that must mean I'm better."

He lifts up his head again, with a quirked brow. "Huh?"

"Well," she starts, grabbing a lock of her hair and twisting it around her index finger, "how do I know you're better, if you don't prove it? So, maybe I'm just better at it than you, and you just don't want to admit it."

Kano squints at her. 

"Fine," he says, standing up with a flourish, his coat twisting around him. "But don't start crying when I beat you!" He grins. "Also, I expect a reward when I win."

"A reward?" She drops her hair when it starts to knot, instead twisting her fingers into the skirt of her dress. "I don't have anything to give you."

"Hm." He taps his chin. "I guess we'll cross that bridge when we get to it!"

* * *

Kano finds himself pushed into the cramped corner by the front door ("So you can't hear me if I hide close to you," Mary had said), and sat on the floor with his eyes covered. His phone was tossed somewhere near by, ticking down to a minute long timer.

Truthfully, he doesn't care much for hide and seek – it's boring, doing nothing but sit in a stuffy (and sometimes dark) hiding place while you wait for someone else to find you. It seems redundant, to give away all your good hiding spots for the sake of a game. It's better just to keep them close to you, just for yourself, so you can sneak away when you need to.

But, it just so happens that he likes to mess with people, with Mary being one of the more fun members of the Mekakushi Dan. It's so easy to unearth her buttons and press them. She's usually so soft spoken and tolerant, if not a bit flighty, so it's fun to fluster her, to rile her up the point that she tries to use her eye ability on him. She's such a pacifist fluff ball when it comes to everyone but him, and it's  _ fun. _

"You better not be planning on cheating," Kido says, nudging her foot against the underside of his knee. He scoffs.

"I've never cheated in my life. I don't know where you would get that idea from. It's slander." 

He yelps when her gentle nudge turns into a sharp kick into his soft skin. That one might bruise, if he's not too careful.

"Don't kick me," he whines, "if I accidentally uncover my eyes, it's gonna be your fault."

"No, it won't," she says, and she's somewhere off to the left. It feels a little too vulnerable, not being able to see. Especially when Kido is being so generous with her kicking. "I'll just tell Mary to come out because you cheated, and then you'll have to start over." 

He pouts; he makes sure that it's still dramatic and just as performative, even with his eyes closed. It seems to hit the mark, with the way that Kido sighs so tiredly, like she's just run a marathon. It makes him smile – it's genuine, this time, because annoying Kido is always fun.

The alarm blares, and Kano makes sure his ability is firmly in place so it doesn't look quite so bad when he jumps out of his skin. Kido snorts, so it seems like he failed on that mark. He makes sure to brush himself off and pretend that it didn't damage his ego too badly. He blinks out the spots in his vision and all the veiny light, standing on wobbly legs. 

He immediately looks for the telltale signs of Mary: an impossible fluff of white hair, a blue skirt edging too close to the break in a wall, a loose sock left behind in her wake. There's nothing she's left behind, though.

Maybe she isn't as bad as he thought she would be.

Kido has a self satisfied smirk on where she's reclining back on the wall, with crossed arms and bangs in her eyes; it's her whole, I'm-trying-to-be-cool deal and all. 

"I might have helped her," she shrugs, "just a little bit."

Kano pouts, even though he knows it's null. "That's cheating."

She blinks at him. "I hope you're not being serious."

"Ah, you know me,  Mr. Serious!" He jeers, waving a hand. Kido looks less than amused, so he decides to cut his loses to avoid the inevitable punch to the shoulder and leaves the entry way.

He knows all the little nooks and crannies that someone might hide in, in their hideout. It was the first thing he scoured for when they moved in, preparing for the inevitability of something going wrong (nothing ever did, though – he's still wary). They're all little spots that he's kept close to his heart as the years have gone by, spots that he visits when he needs a break. 

He knows he won't have trouble finding Mary. 

He checks obvious ones first; wrapped in the curtains, the backs of closets, behind the couches, in the shower. Nothing turns up, and Kido is still looking smug by the front door, even while she ignores him and plays on her phone.

_ Alright then, _ is all he thinks.

Next is under the beds, in the dryer, the cupboards, and the gap where the fridge meets wall. It's void of the familiar white poof hair and the soft blue of her dress, just the electric hum of the cooler.

The next thing he thinks is,  _ Shit, maybe all of my secret hiding spots haven't been so secret all along. _

So, he checks the loose floorboard in the corner of the kitchen, the one that he hides his snacks in (making sure he was out of Kido's sight for that one). He even checks the hollowed-out, defunct dumbwaiter in his closet, and the blocked off area in the coat room that you can kick down and crawl into the walls from.

They're all empty and mostly dusty, covered in cobwebs that would make Shintaro scream like a girl – a very pleasant thought through all his confusion. The dust is so thick in most areas, he can still see some of his small footprints from years ago, faded and worn. He blows them away and coughs when they get in his eyes.

Kano drops on the couch to think, leaning on his knees and cupping his head in his hands. Kido's still smug, recrossing her arms and turning off her phone, smiling.

"You ready to give up?" She asks, and it's with much more glee than she really should have.

"Nope! Just thinking about what my reward should be, is all," he says, and it's not a complete lie – they never set a timeframe, so really, he has all the time he needs. He isn't too worried about losing; but, the thought that Mary knows more about the hideout than he does irks him in ways he doesn't want to think about.

Kido rolls her eyes, and sends off a text on her phone. 

Maybe now wouldn't be a bad time to turn to Google for ideas.

He finally looks up when the handle to the front door jiggles, then unlocks with that annoying squeak they can never seem to stamp out. Seto walks in, dribbling water onto the floor, shaking around like a wet dog. His hair is waterlogged, and his coat is a shade darker from the rain.

"You forgot your umbrella again?" Kido asks.

"It's raining?" Kano asks at the same time.

Seto's eyes flit between the two of them. "Oh, yes to both of those," he says as an afterthought, while he wrings out some of the water in his sleeves. It all pools onto their welcome mat. "It's just sprinkling, really."

Kido clicks her tongue. "You're going to catch a cold like that."

He laughs, rubbing at the nape of his neck. "Yeah, I know. I'm bad about checking the weather."

"Oh, hey, forget about that!" Kano says, and he uses all the self restraint left in him to keep from shouting. He springs onto the balls of his feet, and makes quick strides over to him. "If you were Mary, where would you hide?"

Seto pauses, looking between Kano and Kido. "Why?"

"No cheating," Kido interjects, not taking her eyes off the centre of Kano's head – it's times like these that he's suddenly very glad that her ability isn't, like, laser eyes or something.

"Nu-uh-uh," he tuts, waggling a finger in her face, keeping a careful eye out for any signs of her biting it off. "Who was it that openly admitted to cheating just as the game started?"

"Um," Seto says, and they both snap back over to him. He forces out a laugh. "For some reason, I feel like I shouldn't get involved in this."

"You shouldn't—"

"I'll take over your dish duty for a week," he says it all in one breath, steamrolling anything Kido was planning on saying. She glares at him, but Seto has that intrigued glint in his eyes that says that he's already sold, and the rest of the banter is mostly for show. Totally worth an extra kick to the shins, in Kano's opinion.

"Well," Seto says slowly, throwing a wary glance at Kido, "I am pretty busy with work and all, so..."

"Seto, if you say yes I'm disowning you."

Seto sputters a bit.

"Two— two weeks!" Kano flings out an arm, holding up two fingers. He might be sweating. "I'll do dishes for two weeks!"

"Three," Seto says.

He pauses. "Eh?"

"Three weeks," Seto repeats, and he's smiling like the angel he so clearly isn't. 

"Fine!" Kano chokes, and he's only now realizing that this is a very bad deal on his part, just because he couldn't deal with his title of Hide and Seek Master being revoked, just because he felt weird about Mary knowing more about the hideout than he did.

Just because.

"She always hides behind the couch," Seto says cheerily, shucking his coat off and draping it over his arm. 

"The... the couch?" He asks, and it feels like he's deflating. Perhaps Kido really did develop a laser eyes ability, and now he's suffering the consequences, with all of the air drifting out of him.

He can't count how many times he's cast sidelong glances behind it while he's walking by. It's the same every time; the same shag carpet from when they moved in, the same Mary-sized spot, so clearly devoid of Mary herself.

"Yeah, the couch," he says, ignoring Kido's huff of defeat and Kano's visible despair. Instead he pulls of his shoes, setting them neatly by the door.

"I've already checked behind the couch," he says after he's regained his ability to speak. Seto blinks at him.

"Look again," is all he says, while he takes out his wallet and checks for water damage.

Kano turns around. The couch looks the same, the room looks the same, everything looks the same. 

He makes his way over to it, though – walking toe-to-heel and deathly quiet, just in case. He gives it an assessing look – still looks normal, and it doesn't seem like Mary has suddenly turned invisible, either – before he drops down onto his hands and knees, peeking underneath it. There are some stale potato chips and candy wrappers pushed off to the side. He ignores them, along with all of the inexplicable clumps of animal fur that are starting to make him want to sneeze.

And then, there's Mary, hidden over on the other side, tucking her hair under an arm; most likely so her fly-aways won't give up her spot. She has her phone lain in front of her, watching it like a cat – a sleepy cat, with half lidded eyes.

_ Cute, _ is the first thought that pops into his mind. And then it's,  _ wait, how did she get there? _

He pops back up to his knees and decides to ignore that for now, shooting Kido and Seto a grin. He puts a finger to his mouth to shush them. Kido just rolls her eyes; Seto laughs good-naturedly. It's almost like he didn't just scam his foster sibling into a his own manual labor – but maybe Kano is just being bitter at this point.

He shuffles around to the side, away from the wall Mary is facing, so her back is to him. She's still looking at her phone while she presses the home button, lighting up the screen. She turns it off again, then back on. Kano comes up behind her, and latches his hands to her sides and tickles. She jolts, yelps, and starts laughing, trying to scramble away from him.

"Kan-Kano? Stop— stop, I'm—"

She lands a square kick to his diaphragm, knocking the wind out of him. He wheezes, keeling over, trying to get all the air back in his lungs.

"What?" She ask-wheezes.

"I tickled you," he says, also wheezing.

"I know," she mutters, pushing the skirt of her dress down, running a hand through her mused hair and clothes. She re-situates so she's kneeling, "I know that," she repeats, "but you cheated again."

"What?" He feigns a scandalized gasp and smacks a hand over his heart. "I would  _ never_ _—_ and, even if I did," he pauses, and lets it simmer a bit, "it would only be in retaliation." His voice falls into a teasing lilt at the end, and a brilliant shade of pink lights up her face; it matches her eyes nicely.

"Well," she screws the ridge of her hand into her dress, almost like a petulant child. "I don't think it counts. You cheat all the time."

_ "Well_ _,"_ he copies, tapping his chin. Her phone is still on, still just sitting by her side and he eyes it. He lunges forward and grabs it before she can yell at him. "What do we have here?" He swipes a thumb down, and texts fall into it's place, full of Mary's broken typing next to Kido's ridged form. "A conversation with Kido, hm? Interesting."

"Hey—" Mary flattens herself against his side and knots her fingers into his clothes, trying to reach for her phone. He just pushes it further out of her reach, even when he has to squint to read it – it really is convenient that she's so small. "—give it back!"

"And it says—" she jabs him in the side, _"—_ _ow—_ _,"_ he clears his throat so his voice doesn't warble; she packs a surprising punch, "that she was telling you where I was and where I looked, so you could move around?  _Very_ interesting indeed!"

He pulls back and drops it on her, standing up. She scrambles to catch it, even as it falls in the bed of her lap. 

"So, basically, I win – even when we both cheat!"

Mary puffs out her cheeks, but doesn't protest, fidgeting with the hem of her dress. From the other side of the room, there's a slow clap, obviously from Kido, and obviously sarcastic; he still bows with a flourish, though.

"Now," he says, in a continuation, "my reward." Mary perks up a bit at that – still looking a bit bitter, though.

He could be nice with it; something like asking for the money she makes from a session of selling those paper flowers of her's – he knows it's not much anyway. 

Or he could be mean.

He grins. "I want you to take over my dish duty for the next three weeks."


End file.
